No this legal wrangling has only one point. To place an injunction on the Samsung device wherever a court will let it stick
That's what they already did. But I think you're missing the forest for the trees. This is just one small piece of a larger strategy.
When you think about it, Apple doesn't have to worry about "competing" tablets right now. The iPad already has HUGE advantages from ipod/iphone compatibility, the breadth & depth of the app store, the enormously profitable itunes store, and direct retail sales in Apple's own brick&mortar stores.
So why go after Samsung? Samsung supplies many of the most expensive components in the iPad, including the processor, LCD display, DRAM, and flash. Yes, Apple has other suppliers like LG, Toshiba,. and Chimei Innolux...but without Samsung they would never had made their production schedules for the last two iPads.
Seems to me that Samsung recognizes their critical role and is getting uppity, probably demanding higher component prices, and put a shot across Apple's bow by releasing their own tablet (which they don't really expect to win). Apple is responding in kind by using all tools at their disposal to slap Samsung down. Much of the outcome hinges on how quickly the other component suppliers could ramp up to replace Samsung for various parts of the iPad.
There's the irony. The best functional device designs are minimal, generic, faceless, fading into the background so you can just perform the functions.
Apple should be highly praised for adhering to that design philosophy with the iphone and ipad.
But there's no way in hell that they can claim ownership over what is the end goal for ~all~ functional design.
I'm sure they know this, and this legal wrangling has more to do with the dynamics of a powerful producer and their critical supplier than anything else. Heck, it could even be a negotiating tactic for Apple to lower the purchase price of Samsung. Can you imagine that merger?
Trademarking the shape of a 12oz can of soda would be a helluva lot more generic. Of course they couldn't do that for practical reasons.
Trademarking a specific color on soft-drink cans, I can totally understand. And it's only soft-drinks. Which explains why Coke never goes after Tecate for selling a red can of beer.:)
In any case I imagine it is almost impossible to trademark the color black.
Perhaps...use talented young actors with smaller egos? Joss Whedon seems to have been successful enough with that approach.
I just know that movie rights to Altered Carbon were sold a while back, and Morgan's style (though not my favorite for reading) does lend itself to easy screenplay translation.
Speaking of actors, I truly hope the studio doesn't try to recycle Harrison Ford for another Blade Runner movie. Unless he is completely CGI'd.
Ridley Scott is a master. Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster, Matchstick Men...all come to mind as great films over his long career.
I recall Scott's comments on the Alien Quadrilogy DVD set, basically saying that there was no need for a "director's cut" of Alien because he was perfectly happy with the original.
So I really don't think he would screw up a new Blade Runner film.
It is impossible for a new film to compare to the first...Blade Runner was at least a decade ahead of its time...but it will still be GOOD.
On the film-noir-scifi front, I'm also interested to see when Richard Morgan's work (Altered Carbon) makes it to the screen.
On the broader scifi front, I'd love to see Iain M Banks' or Vernor Vinge's or Alastair Reynold's works translated to film. Tough job though.
I replied to a post that said there are "more than enough resources to go around", with a few examples of global resources that we are clearly exhausting.
Whether you choose to value those resources, or believe that they can be replaced with something else, is another matter entirely.
We cannot make more oil at any rate approaching our current consumption.
We cannot make more fish at any rate approaching our current consumption. And believe me, the salmon farmers and tuna ranchers and others are certainly trying.
We CAN plant more trees for factory farming...but we cannot replace the destrroyed forest ecosystems. In particular the highly biodiverse rainforest ecosystems.
There is much more to a forest than just the trees.
Plus consumption is increasing, not decreasing. Most of the world is far behind the consumption rate of Americans, but they are starting to catch up with consumer middle classes. Witness China and India.
Any nihilist can say that, eh, none of this matters. In the grand scheme it doesn't matter if humans go extinct in the next thousand years and cockroaches take over the planet. Or if all diversity is wiped out and the earth becomes a monoculture of one human race that all look alike and think alike.
But most people in my circles are inclined towards continuing human consciousness and intelligence, in a more diverse environment. Your values may differ. In any case, the exhaustion of many resources at current rates on population/consumption is undeniable.
Oh also - population reduction does not require war or killing. Education would do quite nicely. Negative population growth only requires a "one child per couple" mindset. Plus those kids get much more attention and resources from their parents than if they had siblings.
"The last time human eyes will see a shuttle leave a launchpad."
Makes me imagine that the planetary intelligence in the Zarkitron VII cluster will see this launch again, eons from now, when the light from our tiny planet reaches them. Yeah, those ain't human eyes.
I hope at least on of the museums will set up their retired shuttle for interior walkthrough, instead of just putting them on floor display like the Enterprise at Udvar-Hazy.
RIP Space Shuttle, your time is up. Now NASA can move on to the next big target, asteroid landing.
Start with the wikipedia articles noted below, and you will find plenty of footnoted references:
Peak Oil (wikipedia) "Optimistic estimations of peak production forecast the global decline will begin by 2020 or later, and assume major investments in alternatives will occur before a crisis, without requiring major changes in the lifestyle of heavily oil-consuming nations. These models show the price of oil at first escalating and then retreating as other types of fuel and energy sources are used.[3] Pessimistic predictions of future oil production operate on the thesis that either the peak has already occurred,[4][5][6][7] that oil production is on the cusp of the peak, or that it will occur shortly.[8][9] The International Energy Agency (IEA) says production of conventional crude oil peaked in 2006.[10][11]" In brief, optimists and pessimists both agree on the peak, just not on when it will happen (or has happened).
Overfishing (wikipedia) Read the "Instances" and "Consequences" sections, and follow the footnotes. These sections also discuss the relationship of overfishing to (back on topic) the jellyfish explosions.
Extinction (wikipedia) "According to a 1998 survey of 400 biologists conducted by New York's American Museum of Natural History, nearly 70 percent believed that they were currently in the early stages of a human-caused extinction,[31] known as the Holocene extinction. In that survey, the same proportion of respondents agreed with the prediction that up to 20 percent of all living populations could become extinct within 30 years (by 2028). Biologist E. O. Wilson estimated [5] in 2002 that if current rates of human destruction of the biosphere continue, one-half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in 100 years.[32] More significantly the rate of species extinctions at present is estimated at 100 to 1000 times "background" or average extinction rates in the evolutionary time scale of planet Earth.[33]"
LibRT, you have confused realism for pessimism. I am very optimistic that we will overcome these and other resource problems through a combination of education, technology, and human population reduction.
However these problems will not be solved by idiots who bury their heads in the sand, refuse to acknowledge the data, and call that "optimism". They will not be solved by people who wave their hands and say "we have plenty of resources" in the face of overwhelming evidence that the current population is exhausting many resources.
They will be solved by people who can THINK, and we really need more of THOSE people on this planet. But unfortunately the unthinking idiots are the ones who multiply like rabbits.
There are more than enough resources, too (including food) to go around.
How do you explain that many fisheries in the world have been destroyed, and those remaining are in radical decline?
How do you account for the fact that every oil expert agrees we will hit peak oil within decades (and many believe we are already there)?
How do you refute the evidence of accelerating extinctions of other species, e.g. from our widespread destruction of global forests?
These are just a few example where we've proven beyond doubt that the current human population is too large to maintain global resources at steady-state.
Ah, MiniDisc. You may not be missed, but you will be remembered fondly.
MD was by far the best option for musically-inclined travelers throughout the 1990s.
Small, durable, shockproof, long battery life. You could dub lossless digital optical from a CD or another MD. The best players had inline remotes (with a little backlit LCD) that let you control & tweak every function without taking it out of your pocket.
Sony invented the format, but Aiwa made the best portable units.
I remember rocking up in Goa in the late 90's, where long-term visitors would post signs for their trance collections on MD.
I remember many long ferry, train, and bus rides in southeast asia that would have been intolerable without my trusty MD player and a couple dozen discs in my backpack.
Of course MD has been obsolete for a decade. And now I can get the same results from an app on my iPhone. But it was great during its time.
iDevices...are consumer oriented and not inherently 'geeky' devices
Ridiculous.
The iDevices are general purpose computers with a decent range of sensors (audio, image/video, light, proximity, touch, magnetism, gps, 3d acceleration, 3d angular velocity) and outputs (audio, image/video, light, vibration, cell, wifi, bluetooth).
Whether they are "geeky" or not depends solely on how you use them.
We use our iDevices to control home music and lighting with touch/tilt UI, share our locations in near real-time, make music via matrix sequencing, etc. Right now I'm looking at iphone oscilloscope apps/dongles for quick diagnosis of car issues (and I see there are OBD II iphone apps/dongles as well). If that ain't geeky, I dunno what is.
Get over your religious stupidity, and just start using the technology.
The government is not a substitute for good parenting.
You missed the key point of that post:
Unless I am mistaken the law didn't restrict minors from owning or playing the games. If parents want to allow their children to play the games they should be allowed to.
The government is not parenting. They are just making it easier for good parents to do their job.
...about Google+ is that you provide your social network to a corporation that ~already~ has your detailed profile, based on your searches and perhaps gmail, news reading, etc.
That is better than giving your info to yet another large corporate interest.
If you really care about privacy, you can connect your social network with a simple private listserv and/or a web forum. Most social groups have at least one person who is capable of managing this.
When I buy stuff on amazon, I always look at the 2, 3, and 4 star reviews for the best advice.
1-star and 5-star reviews are mostly crap. Sure, some are posted by shills and anti-shills. But plenty of them are posted by real customers who are simply clueless. They post a 5-star review because it's the first product of type X that they've ever bought, or they are deep in the throes of post-purchase rationalization. They post a 1-star review because they bought the wrong thing. Etc.
Just ignore the 1-star and 5-star reviews, and you'll find good info. 3-star reviews have the best information.
The folks that drive hybrids today never cared about performance or ride quality to begin with; they are either the ones who used to drive pre-hybrid econoboxes, or they're the ones who pick their car according to how cool or trendy it is.
Well, I only have a sample size of 3, but my friends & family who drive hybrids today, used to care more about performance.
I can't say whether they changed their tune because of the economy, or their maturity. Probably both. But I can tell you for a fact that they weren't trying to be "cool or trendy". Just practical.
Wheel bearings today are perfectly capable of handling whatever road shocks we throw at them.
There is no reason that this would change just because the bearings live inside a motor.
If you follow your own link to e-traction, you will see that one of their early applications is city buses. Bumps are not an issue. The issue at this point is scaling it down to performant passenger cars.
"Combine these capacitors in body together with the motor in wheel [e-traction.com] thing, and you'll get that much closer to a car, that you can't fix without replacing too many functional parts, when all you needed to do was to replace wheels (how about winter?) and do some body work after a minor accident"
On the contrary, the motor-in-wheel concept radically ~improves~ the maintainability of a car.
Motor-in-wheel eliminates the transmission, differentials, drive shafts, and CV joints. That's a whole lot of stuff that is expensive to repair on modern cars. Also since the power losses of that complex drivetrain are eliminated, a motor-in-wheel car can use a much smaller/cheaper power system. And regenerative braking allows smaller/cheaper mechanical brakes.
Wheel swaps are not an issue at all. All of the motor-in-wheel designs that I've seen, use a tire/rim assembly that bolts on to the motorized hub, just like our wheels today bolt onto the hub. If anything, the rims should be lighter and cheaper than current rims. So more people will be able to keep a set of winter wheels.
The biggest problem with the motor-in-wheel design appears to be the increased unsprung mass, which affects suspension response. I'm confident that problem will be solved by a combination of modern lightweight components, plus changing driver expectations of performance. Folks who drive hybrids today, have already accepted that lower performance and ride quality are an acceptable price for better mileage.
Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" nailed the dark & gritty future back in 1982, a couple years before Neuromancer was published.
Wachowski brothers' "Matrix" nailed virtual reality in 1999.
Dozens of other decent movies have riffed on these and related themes in the last 20 years. "Gamer" in 2009, "eXistenZ" in 1999, and "Magnetic Rose" in Katsuhiro Ohtomo's "Memories" (1995) come to mind.
(Oh and let's not forget the "Wild Palms" miniseries back in 1993 that was directly influenced by Gibson's work. Or maybe we SHOULD forget it.;)
I'd love to see some of the works by Brin, Banks, Reynolds, and Vinge translated to film. However, "Dune" taught us that a richly imaginative scifi novel cannot be translated to a theater-length film (1984), and that it was not cheap enough to produce a decent quality series (2000).
I look forward to the time, perhaps 10 years from now, when one of these authors' works can be made as a high-quality 20+ hour series.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course they couldn't do that for practical reasons.
I saw a few prototypes but I never saw one in production, I expect for practical reasons
Right. Exactly what I said. Thanks for adding zero value.
No this legal wrangling has only one point. To place an injunction on the Samsung device wherever a court will let it stick
That's what they already did. But I think you're missing the forest for the trees. This is just one small piece of a larger strategy.
When you think about it, Apple doesn't have to worry about "competing" tablets right now. The iPad already has HUGE advantages from ipod/iphone compatibility, the breadth & depth of the app store, the enormously profitable itunes store, and direct retail sales in Apple's own brick&mortar stores.
So why go after Samsung? Samsung supplies many of the most expensive components in the iPad, including the processor, LCD display, DRAM, and flash. Yes, Apple has other suppliers like LG, Toshiba,. and Chimei Innolux...but without Samsung they would never had made their production schedules for the last two iPads.
Seems to me that Samsung recognizes their critical role and is getting uppity, probably demanding higher component prices, and put a shot across Apple's bow by releasing their own tablet (which they don't really expect to win). Apple is responding in kind by using all tools at their disposal to slap Samsung down. Much of the outcome hinges on how quickly the other component suppliers could ramp up to replace Samsung for various parts of the iPad.
Now Apple dominates much of the compon
There's the irony. The best functional device designs are minimal, generic, faceless, fading into the background so you can just perform the functions.
Apple should be highly praised for adhering to that design philosophy with the iphone and ipad.
But there's no way in hell that they can claim ownership over what is the end goal for ~all~ functional design.
I'm sure they know this, and this legal wrangling has more to do with the dynamics of a powerful producer and their critical supplier than anything else. Heck, it could even be a negotiating tactic for Apple to lower the purchase price of Samsung. Can you imagine that merger?
Trademarking the shape of a 12oz can of soda would be a helluva lot more generic. Of course they couldn't do that for practical reasons.
Trademarking a specific color on soft-drink cans, I can totally understand. And it's only soft-drinks. Which explains why Coke never goes after Tecate for selling a red can of beer. :)
In any case I imagine it is almost impossible to trademark the color black.
Perhaps...use talented young actors with smaller egos? Joss Whedon seems to have been successful enough with that approach.
I just know that movie rights to Altered Carbon were sold a while back, and Morgan's style (though not my favorite for reading) does lend itself to easy screenplay translation.
Speaking of actors, I truly hope the studio doesn't try to recycle Harrison Ford for another Blade Runner movie. Unless he is completely CGI'd.
Seriously though, this is GOOD news.
Ridley Scott is a master. Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster, Matchstick Men...all come to mind as great films over his long career.
I recall Scott's comments on the Alien Quadrilogy DVD set, basically saying that there was no need for a "director's cut" of Alien because he was perfectly happy with the original.
So I really don't think he would screw up a new Blade Runner film.
It is impossible for a new film to compare to the first...Blade Runner was at least a decade ahead of its time...but it will still be GOOD.
On the film-noir-scifi front, I'm also interested to see when Richard Morgan's work (Altered Carbon) makes it to the screen.
On the broader scifi front, I'd love to see Iain M Banks' or Vernor Vinge's or Alastair Reynold's works translated to film. Tough job though.
"Quick boot" was a ridiculous piece of marketing in the first place.
Anyone who uses a computer regularly and has two brain cells to rub together, has been using sleep/resume for about 10 years now.
I've run systems for several months at a stretch without ever rebooting them. It takes ~3 seconds to wake one up. Problem solved, patent free.
I replied to a post that said there are "more than enough resources to go around", with a few examples of global resources that we are clearly exhausting.
Whether you choose to value those resources, or believe that they can be replaced with something else, is another matter entirely.
We cannot make more oil at any rate approaching our current consumption.
We cannot make more fish at any rate approaching our current consumption. And believe me, the salmon farmers and tuna ranchers and others are certainly trying.
We CAN plant more trees for factory farming...but we cannot replace the destrroyed forest ecosystems. In particular the highly biodiverse rainforest ecosystems.
There is much more to a forest than just the trees.
Plus consumption is increasing, not decreasing. Most of the world is far behind the consumption rate of Americans, but they are starting to catch up with consumer middle classes. Witness China and India.
Any nihilist can say that, eh, none of this matters. In the grand scheme it doesn't matter if humans go extinct in the next thousand years and cockroaches take over the planet. Or if all diversity is wiped out and the earth becomes a monoculture of one human race that all look alike and think alike.
But most people in my circles are inclined towards continuing human consciousness and intelligence, in a more diverse environment. Your values may differ. In any case, the exhaustion of many resources at current rates on population/consumption is undeniable.
Oh also - population reduction does not require war or killing. Education would do quite nicely. Negative population growth only requires a "one child per couple" mindset. Plus those kids get much more attention and resources from their parents than if they had siblings.
On a nice experience, and a nice writeup.
I especially liked this line:
"The last time human eyes will see a shuttle leave a launchpad."
Makes me imagine that the planetary intelligence in the Zarkitron VII cluster will see this launch again, eons from now, when the light from our tiny planet reaches them. Yeah, those ain't human eyes.
I hope at least on of the museums will set up their retired shuttle for interior walkthrough, instead of just putting them on floor display like the Enterprise at Udvar-Hazy.
RIP Space Shuttle, your time is up. Now NASA can move on to the next big target, asteroid landing.
Start with the wikipedia articles noted below, and you will find plenty of footnoted references:
Peak Oil (wikipedia)
"Optimistic estimations of peak production forecast the global decline will begin by 2020 or later, and assume major investments in alternatives will occur before a crisis, without requiring major changes in the lifestyle of heavily oil-consuming nations. These models show the price of oil at first escalating and then retreating as other types of fuel and energy sources are used.[3] Pessimistic predictions of future oil production operate on the thesis that either the peak has already occurred,[4][5][6][7] that oil production is on the cusp of the peak, or that it will occur shortly.[8][9] The International Energy Agency (IEA) says production of conventional crude oil peaked in 2006.[10][11]"
In brief, optimists and pessimists both agree on the peak, just not on when it will happen (or has happened).
Overfishing (wikipedia)
Read the "Instances" and "Consequences" sections, and follow the footnotes. These sections also discuss the relationship of overfishing to (back on topic) the jellyfish explosions.
Extinction (wikipedia)
"According to a 1998 survey of 400 biologists conducted by New York's American Museum of Natural History, nearly 70 percent believed that they were currently in the early stages of a human-caused extinction,[31] known as the Holocene extinction. In that survey, the same proportion of respondents agreed with the prediction that up to 20 percent of all living populations could become extinct within 30 years (by 2028). Biologist E. O. Wilson estimated [5] in 2002 that if current rates of human destruction of the biosphere continue, one-half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in 100 years.[32] More significantly the rate of species extinctions at present is estimated at 100 to 1000 times "background" or average extinction rates in the evolutionary time scale of planet Earth.[33]"
LibRT, you have confused realism for pessimism. I am very optimistic that we will overcome these and other resource problems through a combination of education, technology, and human population reduction.
However these problems will not be solved by idiots who bury their heads in the sand, refuse to acknowledge the data, and call that "optimism". They will not be solved by people who wave their hands and say "we have plenty of resources" in the face of overwhelming evidence that the current population is exhausting many resources.
They will be solved by people who can THINK, and we really need more of THOSE people on this planet. But unfortunately the unthinking idiots are the ones who multiply like rabbits.
There are more than enough resources, too (including food) to go around.
How do you explain that many fisheries in the world have been destroyed, and those remaining are in radical decline?
How do you account for the fact that every oil expert agrees we will hit peak oil within decades (and many believe we are already there)?
How do you refute the evidence of accelerating extinctions of other species, e.g. from our widespread destruction of global forests?
These are just a few example where we've proven beyond doubt that the current human population is too large to maintain global resources at steady-state.
Ah, MiniDisc. You may not be missed, but you will be remembered fondly.
MD was by far the best option for musically-inclined travelers throughout the 1990s.
Small, durable, shockproof, long battery life. You could dub lossless digital optical from a CD or another MD. The best players had inline remotes (with a little backlit LCD) that let you control & tweak every function without taking it out of your pocket.
Sony invented the format, but Aiwa made the best portable units.
I remember rocking up in Goa in the late 90's, where long-term visitors would post signs for their trance collections on MD.
I remember many long ferry, train, and bus rides in southeast asia that would have been intolerable without my trusty MD player and a couple dozen discs in my backpack.
Of course MD has been obsolete for a decade. And now I can get the same results from an app on my iPhone. But it was great during its time.
R.I.P., MD.
iDevices...are consumer oriented and not inherently 'geeky' devices
Ridiculous.
The iDevices are general purpose computers with a decent range of sensors (audio, image/video, light, proximity, touch, magnetism, gps, 3d acceleration, 3d angular velocity) and outputs (audio, image/video, light, vibration, cell, wifi, bluetooth).
Whether they are "geeky" or not depends solely on how you use them.
We use our iDevices to control home music and lighting with touch/tilt UI, share our locations in near real-time, make music via matrix sequencing, etc. Right now I'm looking at iphone oscilloscope apps/dongles for quick diagnosis of car issues (and I see there are OBD II iphone apps/dongles as well). If that ain't geeky, I dunno what is.
Get over your religious stupidity, and just start using the technology.
Psychologically, there is a large difference between WATCHING violence, and PERFORMING violence.
Not saying I agree with the attempted law, but video games ARE very different from passive media.
The government is not a substitute for good parenting.
You missed the key point of that post:
Unless I am mistaken the law didn't restrict minors from owning or playing the games. If parents want to allow their children to play the games they should be allowed to.
The government is not parenting. They are just making it easier for good parents to do their job.
Regardless of the motivations, perhaps these restrictions are doing kids a big favor.
Evidence indicates that saturating kids with violent images actually leads to ~less~ violent behavior.
So...what if saturating kids with sexual images leads to less interest and joy in sex later in life?
It would suck to hit "porn burnout" before puberty, and miss out on much of the fun and excitement of personal sexual discovery.
Just a thought.
...about Google+ is that you provide your social network to a corporation that ~already~ has your detailed profile, based on your searches and perhaps gmail, news reading, etc.
That is better than giving your info to yet another large corporate interest.
If you really care about privacy, you can connect your social network with a simple private listserv and/or a web forum. Most social groups have at least one person who is capable of managing this.
When I buy stuff on amazon, I always look at the 2, 3, and 4 star reviews for the best advice.
1-star and 5-star reviews are mostly crap. Sure, some are posted by shills and anti-shills. But plenty of them are posted by real customers who are simply clueless. They post a 5-star review because it's the first product of type X that they've ever bought, or they are deep in the throes of post-purchase rationalization. They post a 1-star review because they bought the wrong thing. Etc.
Just ignore the 1-star and 5-star reviews, and you'll find good info. 3-star reviews have the best information.
Problem solved.
The folks that drive hybrids today never cared about performance or ride quality to begin with; they are either the ones who used to drive pre-hybrid econoboxes, or they're the ones who pick their car according to how cool or trendy it is.
Well, I only have a sample size of 3, but my friends & family who drive hybrids today, used to care more about performance.
I can't say whether they changed their tune because of the economy, or their maturity. Probably both. But I can tell you for a fact that they weren't trying to be "cool or trendy". Just practical.
Wheel bearings today are perfectly capable of handling whatever road shocks we throw at them.
There is no reason that this would change just because the bearings live inside a motor.
If you follow your own link to e-traction, you will see that one of their early applications is city buses. Bumps are not an issue. The issue at this point is scaling it down to performant passenger cars.
"Combine these capacitors in body together with the motor in wheel [e-traction.com] thing, and you'll get that much closer to a car, that you can't fix without replacing too many functional parts, when all you needed to do was to replace wheels (how about winter?) and do some body work after a minor accident"
On the contrary, the motor-in-wheel concept radically ~improves~ the maintainability of a car.
Motor-in-wheel eliminates the transmission, differentials, drive shafts, and CV joints. That's a whole lot of stuff that is expensive to repair on modern cars. Also since the power losses of that complex drivetrain are eliminated, a motor-in-wheel car can use a much smaller/cheaper power system. And regenerative braking allows smaller/cheaper mechanical brakes.
Wheel swaps are not an issue at all. All of the motor-in-wheel designs that I've seen, use a tire/rim assembly that bolts on to the motorized hub, just like our wheels today bolt onto the hub. If anything, the rims should be lighter and cheaper than current rims. So more people will be able to keep a set of winter wheels.
The biggest problem with the motor-in-wheel design appears to be the increased unsprung mass, which affects suspension response. I'm confident that problem will be solved by a combination of modern lightweight components, plus changing driver expectations of performance. Folks who drive hybrids today, have already accepted that lower performance and ride quality are an acceptable price for better mileage.
Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" nailed the dark & gritty future back in 1982, a couple years before Neuromancer was published.
Wachowski brothers' "Matrix" nailed virtual reality in 1999.
Dozens of other decent movies have riffed on these and related themes in the last 20 years. "Gamer" in 2009, "eXistenZ" in 1999, and "Magnetic Rose" in Katsuhiro Ohtomo's "Memories" (1995) come to mind.
(Oh and let's not forget the "Wild Palms" miniseries back in 1993 that was directly influenced by Gibson's work. Or maybe we SHOULD forget it. ;)
I'd love to see some of the works by Brin, Banks, Reynolds, and Vinge translated to film. However, "Dune" taught us that a richly imaginative scifi novel cannot be translated to a theater-length film (1984), and that it was not cheap enough to produce a decent quality series (2000).
I look forward to the time, perhaps 10 years from now, when one of these authors' works can be made as a high-quality 20+ hour series.